Bruins fall to Maple Leafs, return to Toronto for Game 6

The Bruins missed their first chance to close out their best-of-seven playoff series on Friday night, losing Game 5 to the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-1. The Bruins take a 3-2 lead in the series into Game 6 on Sunday night at Toronto.

It was bound to happen. The line of Milan Lucic, David Krejci and Nathan Horton couldn’t score virtually all of the Bruins’ goals forever.

After Friday night’s loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals, the B’s have to hope something else is inevitable: Another line will emerge. If not, it’s going to continue to be difficult to put away the Leafs.

“Everyone else needs to step up and start contributing,” said winger Brad Marchand after remaining goal-less for a fifth straight game in the Bruins’ 2-1 loss at TD Garden. “We can’t rely on them every single game to score all our goals.”

The Lucic-Krejci-Horton line did generate Boston’s only goal, but also gave one up as the Leafs extended the best-of-seven series. The Bruins take a 3-2 lead into Game 6 at Air Canada Centre on Sunday night (7:30, NESN, WBZ-FM 98.5). They’ve won both road games in the series so far.

The B’s, meanwhile, sank to 1-2 at home in this series, largely because they let the Leafs dominate too much of the game’s first two periods. By the time the Bruins were ready to dominate (19-4 gap in third-period shots), they were behind, 2-0, and still searching for production – especially from the line of Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and Tyler Seguin. The only one of that usually productive trio with a goal is Bergeron, and that came during a Game 4 power play. Marchand has two assists; Seguin has no points at all.

“We’ve got to find a way,” Bergeron said. “We have to go out there and do it for our team.”

Tyler Bozak (second period) and Clarke MacArthur (third) scored Toronto’s goals against Tuukka Rask (31 saves), both on semi-breakaways after Boston turnovers. Zdeno Chara – with an assist from Krejci – beat James Reimer (43 saves) for the Bruins’ only goal with 8:48 left in regulation.

The B’s improved in the second period after letting Toronto run wild in the first, but ultimately some of their best scoring chances led to them surrendering the game’s first goal.

Defenseman Adam McQuaid, whose shot from the point produced a rebound that Bergeron couldn’t convert, then raced back to break up James van Riemsdyk as he rushed back the other way. Van Riemsdyk took McQuad down in frustration, drawing an interference penalty, but the Bruins gave up a goal on the power play. Andrew Ference, seeing duty on the point because Wade Redden was sidelined by an unspecified injury, couldn’t handle a puck at the right point, and couldn’t catch Bozak as he raced away with it. Bozak scored unassisted on the breakaway at 11:27.

The Leafs played a great first period, outshooting the Bruins by a whopping 19-8 margin, and giving themselves an even better chance to extend the series by stifling the Lucic-Krejci-Horton trio, which piled up eight goals and 22 points in the series’ first four games. Neither Lucic nor Krejci managed a shot in the first 20 minutes, while Horton got off only one.

Page 2 of 2 - The line wasn’t entirely silent, though. On the same shift, Lucic took Leafs defenseman Carl Gunnarson hard into the boards deep in Toronto territory, and Krejci knocked Gunnarson off his skates in front of the Bruins’ bench on the same shift.

Mostly, though, the first period was an exercise in watching the Leafs send shot after shot at Rask, who stopped all 19.

Toronto was occasionally quite creative. Mikhail Grabovski, unable to get the puck from behind the net through Johnny Boychuk’s defense, instead flipped it over the net into the crease, from where he banged it out of the air and into Rask’s glove. The play was actually whistled dead because Grabovski played the puck with a high stick, but it showed the lengths to which the Leafs were willing to go to try to score a goal.